Just about every website hosting company advertises that they provide 99% uptime. Stop and think about that for a minute. That means your site can be down for 15 minutes every day and still (almost) squeak in under the 99% "gurantee".
That's pretty sad, don't you think. I have a friend who works for IBM servicing major accounts and he says if their service goes down for more than a few seconds at any time they scream and holler bloody murder. None of this 99% stuff. Most businesses who operate a critical function cannot afford any down time at all. These guys demand 100% uptime!
Actually I find that most of the hosting companies I have dealt with cannot even make the 99% "guarantee". I currently have reseller accounts with four different hosts, and every one of them seems to be down for some part of the day every day. Of course it is very difficult to put your finger on this. They say they monitor their up time and will blame their problems on intermediate bandwidth providers, your "last mile" connection, or whatever.
The truth is, like the cell phone systems we all put up with, the public ip networks used by most hosts are just barely adequate for the job they are called upon to perform. This is probably because there is not enough at stake to spend the money to make them more reliable. If you want or need something really reliable then you go talk to the IBMs of the world and pay about 30 times as much for the service.
As we speak I am trying to backup one of my sites. It is hosted by one of the (supposely) top ranked hosts in the US. The service has been up and down all morning, I can't access my control panel or support "help desk" to report the problem, and my backup has been sitting there spinning at about 10% complete for the last 15 minutes.
I'm sure glad I have that 99% guarantee.
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